The Military Take-Over in Turkish Film Post-1980 The military and its interventions in politics occupy a significant place in the Turkish literary and artistic imagination. The coups of 1960 and 1971 have been depicted in works of literature and TV dramas, and a few analytical studies of their impact exist. Yet the silence around the 1980 military takeover, which arguably left the biggest impression on Turkish society, has only lifted in the past several years. My paper looks at a set of films and television programs which have joined a growing wave of artistic commentary that has broken long-held taboos about the events of 1980. Artistic treatments of 1980 used to be rare. Perhaps the earliest depiction is Yilmaz Guney's award-winning Yol [The Road], which won the Golden Palm at the Cannes Film Festival in 1982. It took another twenty years for other renderings of the coup to follow. My paper will examine several of them which, though less famous, are no less significant for Turkish culture. These include three feature films: Babam ve Oglum [My Father and My Son, 2005] by Cagan Irmak; Eve Donus [Home Coming, 2006] by Omer Ugur; and Beynelmilel [The Internationale, 2006] by Sureyya Sirri Onder and Muharrem Gulmez. In addition, my talk will analyze episodes from a popular TV series, Bu Kalp Seni Unutur Mu? [Could The Heart Forget You?, 2009-10] conceptualized by Tomris Giritlioglu and directed by Aydin Bulut. With a renewed interest in recent history and a willingness to break the silence about 1980, these visual narratives tackle the social trauma inflicted by the coup, eradicated from national memory through fear and ambivalence towards national history. My talk will primarily explore gender as a metaphor for the country and the human cost exacted under the coup regime. In bringing the past to account, film articulates what others have not been willing to say or admit; it records the experience for posterity from the viewpoint of complex human agency. Artistic expression can thus become an arbiter of justice for victims of state terror. This social function of art is neither new nor outmoded, especially in the lively debate which has erupted in Turkey on the possibility of redefining the modern nation and her history.